@Whitetrashsteve: My Grandfather had 2 in a row (with manual transmissions!). He liked using small Ford cars as tow vehicles for his fishing boat. Focus wagons and Escort wagons are both pretty common in Ontario.
@Ben Wojdyla: Still disappointed by the lack of a Focus wagon here. I've borrowed both a Toyota Matrix and a Mazda 3 hatchback repeatedly over the past several years and the cargo area in my Escort Wagon beats both in terms of cargo space and utility. I can even give an Escape a run for its money in cargo volume (though not mass).
Alcohol powered Briggs & Stratton or a turbodiesel Kubota (say 33 hp and 66 lb. ft of torque out of ~200 lbs, but there are lots of options).
Either should be significantly more powerful than the original engine.
Either should be significantly more powerful than the original engine.
@Jagvar: Old Counterstrike gamer tag from the days of WAN. Guess what I was drinking when I signed in the first time...
#oppositelock
#oppositelock
@Elhigh: 200 HP, 400 lb-ft., 3.3L i-4 Ranger? Obviously no market for that.
My Mother's Toyota Matrix had a screw tossed in the liftgate at the factory. A rattle developed after she had been driving it a little while and the dealer found the screw when they pulled the paneling apart to diagnose the problem.
I used to spend time around a bunch of Chrysler workers and although they didn't generally sabotage the cars that they were building they were certainly good at stealing parts off of the line (MacPherson struts, mirror assemblies, tailgate components, and supposedly there was a problem with disappearing nav systems).
I used to spend time around a bunch of Chrysler workers and although they didn't generally sabotage the cars that they were building they were certainly good at stealing parts off of the line (MacPherson struts, mirror assemblies, tailgate components, and supposedly there was a problem with disappearing nav systems).
The last junkyard I went to was a high turnover affair. They stripped batteries, tires and rims on the way in then dropped the body right onto the oil soaked gravel in the appropriate line of cars from the same manufacturer to sit for a few days before hitting the crusher.
I needed a gauge cluster and some upper engine parts which were nice and easy to get at. I wouldn't have wanted to try for suspension components or anything on the engine's lower end.
As a bonus I found a nice 7/16 socket ground into the mud. To dampen the mood, while I was checking out an Escort wagon just like mine was being hauled in on a flatbed with the engine blown because the owner had waited for the check engine light to come on before changing his oil.
I needed a gauge cluster and some upper engine parts which were nice and easy to get at. I wouldn't have wanted to try for suspension components or anything on the engine's lower end.
As a bonus I found a nice 7/16 socket ground into the mud. To dampen the mood, while I was checking out an Escort wagon just like mine was being hauled in on a flatbed with the engine blown because the owner had waited for the check engine light to come on before changing his oil.
A 1983 Turbo Ford Escort would be cheap and entertaining. Maybe a Mazda RX-7 or a Datsun/Nissan 280ZX for something a little bit nicer.
LAV 3 / Stryker
Murilee's Civic
Egyptian military contract Jeep
Get your mother a racing license and send her to a LeMons race as a penalty driver. For example: Get a black flag? Here's your replacement driver for the next 10 laps.
I'd rather see an exec called out as the Jean Chretien of the automotive world. (Crazy, incomprehensible, prone to strangling protesters, hanging on to power for a few years longer than they should have...)
There was a great week of radio during the summer of 2002 when I was commuting to work early every morning. The losers from one of the local morning shows were on vacation and as a replacement they had one of the late night guys (George Stroumboulopoulos) and a series of guest hosts including rock stars, local TV personalities and various other people who weren't usually on air or up that early in the morning. Great banter plus better music than normal. As a bonus the Pope was in town that week for world youth day and to help provide comedic fodder. One of the station's advertising tags was "102.1 The Edge Presents: The Pope, live to air at Downsview Park" (because he was at one of the venues the station used for concerts).
Even with the Tigra and Bunny video above I still couldn't place the decade the song was from.
This mash up also seems Jalopnik/ Lemons appropriate: [www.youtube.com]
@skaycog: Their brilliant fashion sense? #boothbabes
Come on Matt, think a bit bigger. Surely you deserve to be embalmed like Lenin and displayed for all to see inside your Volvo on your widow's lawn.
@Murilee Martin: Some of the earlier 6 megapixel consumer DSLRs are hitting the $200 range (with kit lens) used. As long as the camera has an input for a wired external release using a stereo jack hooking up an intervalometer shouldn't be too hard. Taping the lens at whatever focal length you want so it doesn't shift and leaving the camera in Av mode at f/8 or so should give usable images.
Building a protected, vibration damped mount that can be attached far enough into the car that it won't take a direct impact will take some work but it should be doable.
Escape (when not driving a company F250 Super Duty or an unlicensed diesel South African Toyota Land Cruiser 70 pickup)
Escort Wagon (city commuter)
Cherokee (in the wilds of Alberta)
Malibu (formerly my Great Grandmother's car)
CJ (in northern Ontario)
Pinto
Pinto (in University)
Of all of those, even though I've never been in one I really wish that the Land Cruiser 70 could be licensed for use on public roads here.
Red 2008 Mazda 3 hatch with a manual transmission. She even lets me borrow it occasionally.
It replaced a similarly equipped 2005 Matrix (wrecked when another driver illegally turned across her lane at an intersection) and was preceded by a 1995 Grand Caravan, a 1990 Caravan, a 3 door Nissan Stanza with a manual transmission and a manual Ford Pinto hatchback. Other than the minivans our family tends toward small manual transmission cars with hatches and light trucks (CJ, Cherokee, Escape).
@acarr260: Having the most recent comments at the top will take a bit of adjustment but pulling classic commenters back into the fray and gaining an edit button is certainly worth it.
@SuperVette....Chevette: If nobody sees the COTD does the commenter still exist?
The only Pontiac I've spent any amount of time driving was a friend's late '90s Sunfire on a road trip. It drove fairly nicely at 90 mph plus on the highway if you ignored the steering wheel being off by 15 degrees or so but the interior hadn't aged well and the gearing on the transmission made city driving annoying.
